Coming off a year of bruising political defeats, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner delivered a State of the State speech Wednesday with an election-year message that economic progress is within reach with a little cooperation at the Capitol.

If only for a half-hour, Rauner set aside his harsh attacks of just two days earlier, when he’d called the speaker of the House “corrupt” and warned Illinois was “on the verge of becoming Detroit, hollowed out by corrupt politicians, massive job loss, massive tax hikes.”

In its place, the governor rattled off a list of what the state can brag about — a host of U.S. presidents, 36 Fortune 500 companies and even Twinkies all hail from here. Rauner pointed to Chicago’s bid to land Amazon’s second headquarters, saying that effort, like fixing the state’s financial woes, “is not a prize one wins alone.”

“It takes a collaborative effort, a forget-about-the-politics-and-roll-up-our-sleeves kind of approach,” Rauner said. “It requires a laserlike focus on economic development and job creation and a bipartisan dedication to restore public trust.”

But the Democrats and the Republican who are trying to head off four more years of Rauner weren’t buying what they said was an attempt by the governor to rewrite the devastating stalemate of his first three years in office.

“The people of Illinois are way smarter than that. No one is falling for that,” said Sen. Daniel Biss, an Evanston Democrat running for governor.

Democratic governor hopeful Chris Kennedy called the speech “incredibly empty,” saying the governor’s praise of the state for its Twinkies history showed a lack of achievements of his own.

Added Republican Rep. Jeanne Ives, who’s challenging Rauner in the March 20 primary election: “I don’t think anything will be different this time around because many members still don’t trust him, and don't have a lot of respect for him.”

Despite Rauner’s bipartisan tone, even before the speech was over, it was clear few in the room — including the governor himself — had forgotten about the politics or were prepared to set aside the battles.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle erupted in cheers and jeers when Rauner announced during the speech that he’d offer a balanced budget in February. The reference to a budget was a reminder of the yearslong impasse that was broken only after more than a dozen rank-and-file Republican lawmakers parted ways with their governor last summer and joined Democrats in overriding his veto of a tax hike to pay for state spending.

Democrats initially laughed at Rauner, before giving him a sarcastic standing ovation, to which Rauner quipped: “And I hope this year you guys will pass it instead of ignoring it.” Rauner is scheduled to deliver his spending proposal on Feb. 14.

Senate President John Cullerton said afterward that Democrats found the idea that the governor would offer a balanced budget this year laughable, but Republicans warned that the governor should be taken seriously.

“This is an election year, and I don't think anybody wants to be on the ballot of Election Day without Illinois’ legislature having passed a balanced budget,” Senate Republican leader Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington told public television show “Illinois Lawmakers.”

To counter the narrative that he hasn’t gotten much done, Rauner spent a healthy portion of his speech listing what he views as his accomplishments.

Chief among them were an education funding overhaul and school funding increases. Rauner lashed out against the school funding bill for much of last summer, dismissing it as a bailout for Chicago Public Schools. He vetoed one version of the proposal before signing off on an updated version that gave even more money to CPS than the original version did.

Rauner’s support for the bill came after he won the inclusion of a tax credit program that will help provide scholarships to private schools for low-income students. But he threw another wrench into the process this month when he vetoed legislation his Illinois State Board of Education said was needed to put the funding formula in place. Lawmakers voted to override that veto just minutes before Rauner took the podium on Wednesday.

J.B. Pritzker, another Democrat running for governor and the candidate whom Rauner regards as his most likely competition in the fall, questioned Rauner taking credit for the education bill.

“This is a governor who time and time again fails, and yet he lies and wants to take credit for other people’s work,” Pritzker said.

Other accomplishments were smaller in nature: clearing the backlog of clemency requests, allowing prison inmates to get professional licenses while incarcerated, starting a task force to combat the state’s opioid crisis, negotiating union contracts with some state worker unions. A new contract with the biggest union, however, remains in legal limbo.

Rauner also addressed controversies brewing in his campaign, defending his administration’s handling of a deadly outbreak of Legionella bacteria at a Downstate veterans home that has killed 13. Rauner gave a shout out to residents of the home sitting in the gallery, whom he met while spending a week at the facility.

The governor’s heaping of praise on the state was aimed, at least in part, at critics who say he’s been too publicly hard on Illinois and has jeopardized the state’s bid for Amazon’s second headquarters. Where the governor typically talks up the state’s political dysfunction and “corruption,” his tone Wednesday was more optimistic as he tried to square his record over the past three years with where Illinois stands today.

“The state of our state today is one of readiness: readiness born of unprecedented frustration with our political culture, along with the firm belief that we have tremendous, but as-yet unrealized, economic potential,” Rauner said.

But even as Rauner spoke, word spread that Lottery Control Board Chairman Jonathan “Blair” Garber resigned after calling Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s hometown of East St. Louis the “shithole of the universe” in a Twitter message to bluegrass and county musician Charlie Daniels a couple weeks ago.

The message, which drew condemnation and calls for Garber’s firing from Democrats and Republicans, appears to have been aimed at Durbin for his discussion of a highly publicized closed-door meeting where President Donald Trump allegedly referred to nations in Africa as “shithole countries.”

Garber, a Rauner appointee, resigned in an email to the governor’s office in which he apologized “for any consternation caused by my poor choice of words.”

Rauner also waded into the debate surrounding the #MeToo movement, criticizing lawmakers for their response after allegations of rampant sexual harassment at the Capitol surfaced last fall. He said while legislators passed measures to require sexual harassment awareness training, “many believe that transparency and accountability were sacrificed for optics and speed.”

The governor said he would sign an executive order “to strengthen the policies that ensure all government employees under my office’s jurisdiction have reliable and responsive outlets for reporting acts of sexual misconduct.” His comments came as many lawmakers in the ornate House chamber were dressed in black as a statement of solidarity against sexism and harassment.

In addition, the governor hit many of his previous and current campaign themes, calling for term limits on elected officials, property tax relief and new rules preventing members of the General Assembly from acting as lawyers in property tax appeals cases.

The governor’s focus on property taxes is aimed at Democratic Speaker Michael Madigan, who is a partner in a law firm that focuses on real estate tax appeals, which Rauner contends is a conflict of interest.

Madigan fired back in a statement after the speech.

“As he has done throughout his administration, Gov. Rauner chooses to blame others for the challenges facing our state on his watch instead of being the leader he was elected to be,” the speaker said.

Kennedy, the Democratic governor candidate, also has been campaigning on changes to the property tax system on the campaign trail, and called Rauner a “plagiarist,” saying he “stole a bunch of ideas from me.”

Rauner did not address the unpleasant side effects of the yearslong budget impasse that left the state awash in billions of dollars in debt, resulted in major cuts for social service providers and forced layoffs at universities, but he did paint himself as a “careful steward” of taxpayer dollars.

He said he vetoed unbalanced budgets that would push the state further into debt and tried to stop “tax increases that Illinoisans couldn’t afford.”

Critics argued Rauner’s actions only served to prolong the impasse, during which time the administration spent at least $2 billion the state didn’t have.

Democratic Comptroller Susana Mendoza said Rauner’s good steward claim “would only make sense if it was Opposite Day.”

Meanwhile, Rauner hinted at his future budget plans, including rolling back at least some of the income tax hike lawmakers put in place over his objections, along with curbing spending — a difficult ask in a year when legislators are hoping for stability when it comes to budget-making.

“It is time we do what the people of Illinois want,” Rauner said. “Halt the advance of taxes. Stop spending money we don’t have.”